Un Russian missile hit a “busy” shopping mall in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, killing 16 and injuring 59, the head of Ukraine’s emergency services said. “The occupiers fired a missile at a shopping center where there were more than a thousand civilians. The shopping center is on fire and rescuers are fighting the fire,” regional governor Dmytro Lounin said on Telegram. The toll could rise further.
“The number of victims is impossible to imagine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensk reacted on Facebook. He accompanied his message with a video showing the shopping center on fire, emitting large clouds of smoke, with fire trucks and a dozen people on site. “Today’s Russian strike on a shopping mall in Kremenchuk is one of the most brazen acts of terrorism in European history. A peaceful city, an ordinary shopping center (with) inside women, children, ordinary civilians,” Volodymyr Zelensky continued.
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A “crime against humanity”
The missile fire on Kremenchuk hit a busy place that has no connection with the hostilities, for his part indicated on Facebook Vitali Maletsky, the mayor of this city which had 220,000 inhabitants before the war. Regional Governor Dmytro Lounin denounced a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity”, as well as an “undisguised and cynical act of terror against the civilian population”.
Boris Johnson on Monday condemned this Russian strike, which he said shows Vladimir Putin’s “cruelty and barbarism” and only “strengthens the determination” of the West to support kyiv. “This appalling attack has shown once again the depths of cruelty and barbarism to which the Russian leader is prepared to fall,” the British prime minister said in a statement.
READ ALSOWar in Ukraine: “These are burning lives”
Emmanuel Macron in turn denounced an “absolute horror” and called on the Russian people to “see the truth” in the face, in a tweet accompanied by a video of the building invaded by flames. “We share the pain of the families of the victims. And anger at such ignominy, ”added the French president, in a message broadcast in Russian and Ukrainian.
The bombing of a shopping mall in Kremenchuk by Russia is absolute horror. We share the pain of the families of the victims. And anger at such ignominy. The Russian people must see the truth: pic.twitter.com/7drortbGSE
—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 27, 2022
Ukraine has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on the latest Russian bombings against civilian targets in Ukraine, to be held at 7 p.m. GMT on Tuesday, it was reported. learned on Monday from the Albanian presidency of the highest UN body.